Jaime Gago Condensing Information Systems From the Vapor Of Data

RHEL 6 (X86_64) and Nvidia driver with Geforce 8800 GTS

As I'm preparing for the Red Hat System Administrator certification I thought I would use my old gaming PC so I got an Academic license and installed RHEL6 so I could tinker at home...Oh boy...So far most of the pain has come from issues with my GeForce 8800GTS, or at least that's what I've gathered from the many steps I've been through to get X window and KDE to work.

I'm totally fine with runlevel 3 but a hanging "init 5" was not a satisfactory install and so I spent 2 evenings "google fu'ing" to finally get successfully to runlevel 5.

Here is what I did:

Related hardware

GPU:Geforce 8800 GTS

Monitor:DELL 2005FW

Steps

Initially I installed RHEL 6 from DVD with a VM Host config, and unlike the installs I've done in the past, system would boot at runlevel 3. As I said in my intro $>init 5 would hang forever, after running several commands i.e. $>startx $>yum grouplist, I realized that none of the desktop packages had been installed, fine.

Before I went and install X Window and KDE, I first had to install the Nvidia Linux driver, I'd like to say it was a breeze, it wasn't.

1)Nvidia driver install

After downloading and running the Nvidia script to install the driver I got a complaint about the "Nouveau" driver and then the install was failing , this was fixed using the method I found here

PETR’S BLOG ABOUT LINUX

that allowed me to install the NVidia driver but wasn't enough (more on that later), oh at one point the Nvidia complained I didn't have GCC ( Compiler)

$>yum install gcc kernel-devel

2) Install Xwindow + KDE

I first installed KDE via groupinstall and I though that would get me X Window ( I was wrong).

$>yum groupinstall "KDE Desktop"

$>yum groupinstall "X Window System"

At this point I was thinking I should be ok...not.

$>init 5 was still hanging and startx was not working, damn! Finally looking at the Xwindow log + some google fu I got the solution from a post on the Nvidia forum thank you "Dragster_tuner" whoever you are, wherever you are I owe you one.

3)Install Nvidia driver (again) but this time with the right path for the modules (well of course!)

$>./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-285.05.09.run.sh --x-module-path=/usr/lib64/xorg/modules

And then oh joy $>init 5 now bring the beautiful Dolphin KDE.Great!

That's it for the GUI fun, time to get serious time to configure KVM via SSH  ;-)

$>init 3

Remember, Unix is user-friendly, it's just very selective about who its friends are...

In case some folk wants to more details here is my bash history with some comments:

  1  init 5
    2  ifconfig
    3  vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 #eth0 was not initialize at install time nor did the installer asked for it
    4  /etc/init.d/network restart
    5  ls
    6  chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-285.05.09.run.sh
    7  ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-285.05.09.run.sh #this is where I got the "nouveau" driver complaint
    8  init 6
    9  ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-285.05.09.run.sh
   10  rhn_check
   11  rhn_register #Oh yeah I have an Academic license at home and so the Red Hat recommended method for RHEL 6 does not worksee this >> https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-63560
   12  yum update
   13  ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-285.05.09.run.sh
   14  yum install gcc kernel-devel
   15  init 6
   16  man dracut #what the heck is "dracut" a dragqueen hair cut?
   17  sed -i '/root=/s|$| rdblacklist=nouveau vga=791|' /boot/grub/grub.conf
   18  echo "blacklist nouveau" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
   19  mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname  -r)-nouveau.img
   20  dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)# This is the last command I ran to fix the "nouveau driver" issue
   21  yum remove xorg-x11-drv-nouveau#this did nothing as I didn't have that package installed
   22  reboot
   23  init 3
   24  ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-285.05.09.run.sh
   25  reboot
   26  init 5
   27  runlevel
   28  startx
   29  init 6
   30  startx
   31  yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"
   32  yum grouplist |grep gnome
   33  yum grouplist
   34  yum groupinstall "KDE Desktop"
   35  init 6
   36  startx
   37  init 5
   38  startx
   39  init 5
   40  reboot
   41  startx#nope no X window with KDE Desktop group
   42  reboot
   43  startx
   44  X -configure
   45  ls /usr/bin/
   46  yum grouplist
   47  yum groupinstall X Window System #I'm tired
   48  yum groupinstall "X Window System"
   49  startx
   50  init 5#fail
   51  startx
   52  nvidia-xconfig --enable-all-gpus#nice try sucker
   53  startx# fail
   54  vi /var/log/Xorg.0.log
   55  ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-195.36.08-pkg2.run --x-module-path=/usr/lib64/xorg/modules
   56  ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-285.05.09.run.sh --x-module-path=/usr/lib64/xorg/modules
   57  startx
   58  init 5
   59  init 6
   60  init 5 # VICTORY
   61  init 3 # Now back to work